The year is just getting underway and the new legislative sessions get underway Wednesday for both Missouri and Illinois legislators.

Reporter Kevin McDermott, in a story today, says that all indications are that it will start in pretty much the same way last year ended: with bickering between Gov. Rod Blagojevich and legislative leaders over Chicago’s mass-transit crisis, downstate infrastructure needs, education funding, gambling expansion and other issues.

Jefferson City reporter Virginia Young writes today that the 2008 legislative session kicks off this week with tax relief for homeowners and health care for the working poor at the top of the…

A five-foot-tall wooden cross scribbled with racial epithets was burned early Dec. 8 in front of a Belleville home owned by a black man in a racially mixed neighborhood.

Monday’s story, Cross burning recalls Belleville’s past racial divide, explains that just days earlier, newsletters referencing the Ku Klux Klan were thrown in the driveways and lawns of several Belleville and Shiloh neighborhoods.

Racial strife has run deep throughout the Belleville area in the past. But things seem to be changing — or is it?

“Belleville has made so much progress, this won’t stand in our way,” said Bill Clay, who…

The rules of the new Illinois law are still as foggy as our weather this week, but in just three short weeks, smokers in Illinois will be banned from lighting up in public places.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed in July the Smoke Free Illinois Act, which bans smoking in virtually all public places. But a state committee hasn’t adopted the specific rules that clarify the law.

Smoking on patios, for instance, is still uncertain. The law says smoking will be banned in all indoor public places or places of employment, and within 15 feet of an entrance, open window or…

I know from experience in this blog that our readers use the Missouri state park system. We’ve talked about it before in the context of the Johnson’s Shut-Ins disaster. I’ll assume that our Illinois readers use the Illinois state park system, too! This topic is derived from a story we’re working on about the Missouri park system. Park officials are seeking the input of residents on how they can improve the system in the year 2017 and beyond. According to our story, "Ideas from the public will be accepted via e-mail through March 1. Then those ideas will be included in a…

For me, it’s an easy call. Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, is the one among these eight to have influenced me the most. Loved that book. Will never forget it. You can read more about the eight honorees here. And there’s a more expansive story here, on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution site.
They are:

- Gary Becker, economist and 1992 Nobel Prize winner.

- Oscar Elias Biscet, human rights advocate.

- Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

- Benjamin Hooks, NAACP former executive director.

- Henry Hyde. Illinois Republican who served 32 years in…